There's a joke about a cat who boarded a plane, produced a gun and said, "take me to the canaries".

There's a joke about a cat who boarded a plane, produced a gun and said, "take me to the canaries". But there is an easier way.

Things began badly. Iberia lost the luggage, as it is wont to do.

I don't think I've ever travelled with the Spanish airline when it has not got something wrong, whether it was cancelling the flight at the last minute, losing bags, promising me a seat with extra legroom then squeezing me into an overhead locker with 48 fat nuns or, once, memorably, abandoning its own seating plan and just telling everyone to pile on and fend for themselves.

In this case, it had managed, spectacularly, to misplace the bags of three out of six of us flying to Gran Canaria.

Enquires in the direction of the Iberia desk there elicited the information that the bags had been sent to Santiago de Compostela, where they had probably gone out clubbing with a clutch of handbags and were all dancing around a pile of teenagers from Essex.

In retrospect, it was an entirely understandable mistake, Santiago de Compostela sounding almost identical to Gran Canaria, give or take most of the letters.

Bagless and disgruntled, we set off to the ship in a taxi whose driver followed the national custom of treating the speed limit as a minimum rather than a maximum.

At the harbour, the staff of Black Watch prised our eyes open and led us, still trembling gently, to the gangway.

I had been warned that the typical age of a Fred Olsen aficionado was well above the 44 which is now the average for cruise passengers, and indeed, as I waited for the lift up to reception, the doors opened and out popped a woman in a sparkly ballgown.

She was 5ft tall and would not see 70 again in a hurry.

"Heavens, you're a big lad," she said brightly. "What are you doing later?"

"I'm having an early night with a mug of cocoa," I said. "It's been a long day."

"Honestly, you young people have no stamina," she said, heading off in the general direction of the cocktail bar.

I sighed and went to bed, since I had a hot date with a cold penguin.

This was in Loro Parque, a Tenerife wildlife park of sub-tropical gardens in the shadow of snowcapped Mount Teide. Inside, rainbows rose from mist-draped trees and a bunch of baffled penguins sat around a pool looking like fat chaps at a formal, wondering what on earth they were doing in Tenerife.

I am, I must say, deeply impressed with the way penguins always take the trouble to dress for dinner, even though all they eat is fish.

From pipes above their heads, man-made snow drifted down, and from time to time they would dive in and swim gracefully up to the glass wall to gaze curiously at us as if we were the exhibits, not them.

They were probably right. Past the penguin pool was a remarkable three-storey glass tank full of silvery fish swimming around in circles.

One of them had got it wrong and was going in the wrong direction, saying to the others on every circuit: "Have we met? Your face looks awfully familiar, but I can't quite place the name".

Around the other side, Jose the guide was listing the rest of the morning's attractions: sea lions 10.15, parrots 10.45, dolphins 11.15. I wrote them down, feeling like David Attenborough's appointments secretary.

There were other highlights, like the mind-over-water antics of the sea lions: have you ever tried standing on one flipper while twirling a beach ball on the end of your nose? Without the aid of drugs, I mean.

There was the parrot show, which I missed after getting lost between the Gambian market and the Thai Village (Visa and Mastercard welcome).

And some lowlights too: the lonely parakeets calling to each other from their cages: "I say, Cynthia, have you seen

Roger lately?" and two gloomy tigers on an island. There was an even more gloomy Charlie Chaplin lookalike at the entrance to the dolphinarium, but he proved to be a closet comedian, miming to everyone who came in that their flies were open and sending tsunamis of laughter rolling around the auditorium.

As I walked up the gangplank and stepped back on the ship, an old dear coming the other way looked up and said: "Oh, I'd give you a kiss if I had the strength to climb up your leg."

Good grief. I was on a love boat of nonagenerian nymphomaniacs.

On board, several civilized games of shuffleboard and deck quoits were under way, and upstairs in the library, a chap who looked like a retired Spymaster General was tackling a particularly tricky patch of sky in a 1,000-piece jigsaw.

If the clientele of the Black Watch were a fabric, they would be floral chintz. Resolutely middle English, they are Daily Mail readers who eat kedgeree and kippers for breakfast, think that Tony Blair is the Anti-Christ and are convinced that the country is going to rack and ruin and the only way to live in it is to leave on a large ship.

There, everything is as it should be: the crew wear spotless whites, the staff are deferential but not obseqious and everyone dresses for dinner, just as they did when both the globe and gins were universally pink.

Talking of dinner, I had planned an exciting rubber of bridge and a visit to the gym to work up an appetite, but instead fell asleep and woke just in time for a meal which was close to perfection: salmon with Chablis, then steak washed down by a Gevrey-Chambertin.

It would have taken only apple crumble and a glass of Sauternes to make me propose to the chef and the sommelier simultaneously, but fortunately for them, at this stage I was dragged off to the cabaret, which consisted of a man called Tony Jo - formerly of the Grumbleweeds, whoever they were - telling slightly blue jokes to an audience with rinses to match.

I had a Laphroaig, went to bed and slept like a log.

In the morning, after clearing up the leaves, I set off under a grey and troubled sky into the interior of La Palma, one of the lesser-know Canary Islands.

All laurel and misty ravines, it was like mid Wales after an earthquake, until suddenly the sun came out, illuminating the vivid yellow and green of a lemon tree in an epiphany of light and hope.